In the United States, the fight against “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) is in full swing. Since the spring of 2025, in national parks, visitors have noted the disappearance of historical and educational panels evoking slavery, racism, climate change or the detention of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. On September 15, the Washington Post announced that the Trump administration was demanding the removal of a famous photograph, of unprecedented historical significance in the country’s history, from a US national park. The Scourged Back depicts a former slave, probably named Gordon, seated on a chair and offering the camera the spectacle of his bare back, streaked with a network of thick scars engraved in his flesh by the whippings.
In the middle of the Civil War, in March 1863, Gordon – also called Peter, or Whipped Peter“Peter the Whipped” – had just escaped from a plantation in Louisiana to join the northern lines, when two photographers from the Union army made him pose. Reproduced in the form of an engraving and distributed in the American abolitionist press, The Scourged Back became in a few weeks a political and moral icon. At a time when photography was still an emerging technique, this carte-de-visite portrait provided irrefutable proof of the violence inflicted on slaves. And a propaganda tool with unprecedented power for abolitionists, who until then had had to rely on personal stories and testimonies.
Widely distributed in America and Europe, the image helped change perceptions of slavery and legitimize the Northern war effort as a moral crusade for freedom and equality. It can be considered one of the first photographs to have “changed the course of history”argued a New York Times article published in August 2013, which justifies its presence in American history textbooks. But Gordon’s portrait risks disappearing soon, in the name of another “moral crusade”, this time led by Donald Trump, to “restoring truth and reason to American history”.
“Woke is broken”: museums under Trumpian supervision
In English, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”: this is the title, as grandiose as it is worrying, of the decree signed on March 27, 2025 by the 47e president of the United States. In particular, he targets the venerable Smithsonian Institution, responsible for preserving and telling the country’s history. Founded in 1846 by the American federal government, both a scientific research center and a vast cultural network, the institution oversees twenty-one federal museums, galleries and libraries which welcomed nearly 17 million visitors in 2024 (there were around 29 million on average during the 2010 decade, before the pandemic).
In the presidential decree of March, the Smithsonian was ordered to “restore American inspiration and greatness” by eliminating all “inappropriate ideology” of its museums. The text explicitly cites museums linked to racial and gender issues, including the future Museum of American Women’s History (Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum) and the National Museum of African American History and Culture (National Museum of African American History and Culture), which Donald Trump described as “OUT OF CONTROL” in a furious burst of capital letters published on August 19 on his Truth Social network (below).
According to him, the exhibitions of the museum nicknamed “Blacksonian” were intended only to show “how horrible our country is, how terrible slavery was (…), without mentioning anything about the success, the brilliance and the future (of the country)”.
On August 12, in a letter sent to Lonnie Bunch, the president of the Smithsonian Institution, the White House demanded “corrections” visible in exhibitions within 120 days. Eight museums are mentioned, including the National Museum of American History (National Museum of American History) and the National Portrait Galleryunder penalty of budget cuts. The days of “degenerate” art – Donald Trump himself dared to use the term during his first term, as the specialist media The Art Newspaper recalls – and unpatriotic culture are numbered: in July 2026, the country will celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence.
Federal museums, accused of giving a vision “negative” of American history, will have to stick to a heroic, patriotic and above all not woke story from the point of view of the current American president, for whom “WOKE IS BROKE” (“being woke is outdated”). “We have the SEXIEST country in the world, and we want people to talk about it, including in our museums”Donald Trump also shouted on August 19 on Truth Social.
Crucial acts of resistance
The Smithsonian Institution’s museums had to fold under the threat. At the end of July and beginning of August, at the National Museum of American History, the panels devoted to the two impeachment procedures (impeachments) of Donald Trump were removed for a time then replaced after having undergone a rewrite: the new ones now no longer mention the incitement to insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 (which concerned the second procedure ofimpeachment). Depending on the institutions, there are large sections on whiteness (whiteness), the history of African-Americans, or on the LGBT+ community which has faded.
Faced with this chilling halt, reactions are being organized. Several conservatives resign. Two historians, Jim Millward and Chandra Manning, have expressed concern about pressure from the Trump administration on the Smithsonian. Jim Millward, “historian of China”has “Used to see governments attempt to whitewash and censor history in this way. And it really upset me that this threat also exists in the United States.” With Chandra Manning, they launched a volunteer movement of “Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian”, responsible for identifying the millions of cultural objects and documents in the institution’s network, whether they are threatened or not.
A crucial resistance movement, since more than 80% of American teachers use Smithsonian educational resources. If these are modified to reflect the evolution of the content of federal museums, the upheaval should also affect school textbooks, educational visits and course materials.
Religion and control of the historical narrative
In Washington, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts) has also been redacted from part of its content since Donald Trump quickly dismissed his leaders and replaced them with relatives, including the wife of Vice-President JD Vance, who rushed to elect him as president of the board.
In this cultural center, a quote from President John Fitzgerald Kennedy welcomes visitors: “The arts embody above all the creativity of a free society” (“Above all, the arts embody the creativity of a free society”). Donald Trump does not fully embrace the views of his early 1960s predecessor. “No more drag shows”he vituperated in February, targeting these shows which try to “corrupting American youth” and have no place at the JFK Center. We bet that American museums will gain in patriotism what they are losing in credibility.
Fortunately, American youth will finally escape temptation, thanks to Donald Trump, always the man for the job. September 8, visiting the Museum of the Bible (Museum of the Bible) of Washington, he called citizens to weekly public prayer and promised new guidelines to guarantee prayer in schools, in the name of safeguarding the “religious pluralism”. Plural, but strongly tinged with Christianity.
On the White House website, there are suggested resources to facilitate the “Weekly Prayer Challenge”: citizens are invited to gather weekly, with friends or neighbors, to pray together for an hour. “Historical prayers, sermons” and, it goes without saying, “presidential proclamations”. From invisible slavery to imposed prayers, from the erasure of archives to the instrumentalization of art and culture, it is the imposition of an official history, heavily censored with a red marker by the White House, which is taking shape.
